Conclusion

Abstract

To what extent do the seven case studies presented above make up more than the sum of its parts? One may immediately make the generalisation that quantitative criteria in themselves are not enough to substantiate claims to regional great powerhood. The cases of inter-war Poland and Vietnam after 1975 are good reminders that a state without the necessary economic foundation for regional great powerhood will sooner or later be caught out, however strongly the claims to that status are made. Indeed, this is an interesting regional echo of the systems-level debate on the rise and fall of hegemons which took centre stage in the literature during much of the 1980s.¹ However, the cases of Israel and Brazil call attention to the fact that any designation of a set of sufficient quantitative factors will prove insufficient. Israel has, paradoxically, been able to turn small population, small area and regional hostility into an asset. Brazil, which has had a regional preponderance in almost any quantitative set of criteria imaginable, has still, due to a certain lack of interest in its region, nevertheless declined to play an active regional role. In order to assess regional great powerhood, then, a structural, geostrategic orientation is in itself simply not enough. The roles, ambitions and influence held by a given candidate vis-à-vis the other states which make up the region, what may perhaps be called the intersubjectivity of states, must also be taken into consideration.